I got behind again so I will end my story with four parts. This is Part One. The last week of teaching was fun. A lot of my time outside of school was dedicated to grading and writing my TWS. What is a TWS? Good question. It's a 24 page 11,534 word paper on a four day lesson sequence. I taught the lessons at the end of January and it took me until the end of March to finish it. It took hours of reflection and revision and music. School was entertaining. The last two days of school, my Algebra II students had presentations on a mathematician of their choice. They are so funny! I loved watching them express their personalities in their presentations and show their creativity. My Pre-calculus classes and I were working on verifying trigonometric identities, not the most exciting of tasks but by the end of the week they were so good at it. We even did a problem about Bill Cosby. They loved it and more importantly they got it! I was so proud of them. The students that usually struggle and don't participate very much were volunteering to work problems out on the board. At the end the section I reminded that the most important thing to take away was that if you try one way and it doesn't work, try a different way and if that way doesn't work, pick another way and KEEP TRYING!
On Tuesday (March 27th) we did something kind of exciting. We marched to the White House as a school to raise awareness about the death of Trayvon Martin. The students organized the march and we as a faculty supported them. It was interesting to see a group of young people so passionate about something. I was glad that I could support them and also support the students that chose not to march. It was quite the experience. You always see/hear of these things happening on the news, but this time I saw it with my own eyes.
With the end of the week came the end of the third advisory. With the end of the third advisory came a lot of make-up work. Most of the work came from the test corrections from my Pre-calculus classes. We had to rush to squeeze those in, so naturally they all came in on the last day. We also had to get all the students from Europe caught up, or at least the four or five that actually came back to school for the two days before Spring Break. Can you blame the ones that didn't come back though? I mean we all had Spring Break fever two weeks ago and it's only getting worse. My case took a severe turn for the worse when my parents surprised me with plane tickets home for Easter, but that gets into Spring Break which is Part Two. Cliff hanger!! :)
